


Digging Deep Inside Myself

by Distraktion



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Self-Worth Issues, Teambuilding, book nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:54:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28963494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Distraktion/pseuds/Distraktion
Summary: A story about Gully, a Case-53 Ward whose life never seems to get any better. Passed over for leadership positions, smashing everything she touches, and certain that everyone hates/fears her, she's got it rough. But the best thing about being on a team like the Wards is that you're never truly alone...even if it may seem that way sometimes.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9
Collections: The Cauldron Give-a-Fic-a-Thon





	Digging Deep Inside Myself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Redcoat_Officer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redcoat_Officer/gifts).



> AN: Written for Cauldron’s 2020 Fic Santas Event, for Redcoat_Officer.
> 
> Prompt: A story about Gully. As she’s quite an obscure character, I don’t mind about the content of the fic or when it’s set. I’d just like to see her character explored a little.

When I woke up, I discovered that I’d broken my room again. 

The bed had collapsed, the wall had elbow-shaped dents in it, and all the books I’d carefully placed in my bookshelf were all over the floor. I must’ve tossed my pillow at it during my nightly nightmare...and for someone my size a pillow-fight was positively lethal. 

I called the number the PRT gave me, thankfully with a phone that had voice commands so I didn’t have to crush it again by accident. It had only taken them five phones to realize that someone with big ugly sausage fingers wasn’t made for touching things without breaking them. 

How had it been this long and the PRT still hadn’t realized that eight feet of muscle in a queen-sized bed was just asking for trouble? I tried not to think about how annoyed the PRT agent had sounded on the phone. How they were probably laughing at me now.

“ _ Hey guys, Gully smashed another bed and her bookshelf. Put another mark on the board! _ ”

Whatever.

My door opened when I was halfway through getting dressed, and the pair of PRT workmen barely slowed down as I squawked at them. If I were a normal girl, they’d probably have apologized and gotten in trouble for walking in on a Ward...but I’m not normal. I know that.

Besides, it wasn’t like I had anything they wanted to look at. I wasn’t some hot babe like Revel, floating along all dainty-like and turning heads. I was more like a block of granite that talked, and the head worker grinned as I ducked into my closet to finish dressing. I heard them whispering outside, and stepped out to tell them off...but lost my nerve as I towered over them.

They still kept looking at me though, and it was getting kind of unnerving the way they just stared up at me. They didn’t ask me to leave, ask for an autograph, or even ask about the weather. They just stared, and the leader kind of smiled as I started to stutter and turn away.

Even though I could have turned them into a red paste...I was the one who retreated.

I muttered something about training, grabbed my shovel, and headed for the door.

Now they could make fun of me all they wanted, and I didn’t have to hear it.

Unfortunately, I still heard one word as I went out the door.

“-monster.” The leader said, his partner shushing him.

I’d be lying if I said I disagreed…

But it still hurt.

***

I’d also be lying if I said I’d left to actually accomplish something.

Yesterday had been a meeting about picking a new Wards Leader, and it had gone pretty badly. Not only had I been passed over  _ again _ , but since it was the tenth time (double digits...woo) I got a little heated. They had tried all kinds of explanations, but in the end it boiled down to me being an ugly unmarketable brute, and Spire being...normal.

So I’d maybe smashed the conference table with my bare hands. It wasn’t like this was the first piece of furniture I’d ever broken. It’s like a goddamn superpower, frankly. Maybe there’s a villain cape in Sweden with powers based around hard-to-pronounce furniture that I can fight?

But instead of giving me a trading card with “Shaker 4, Brute 1, Furniture 3” on it, they gave me a week of punishment. Worse, they had our brand new Wards Leader tell me. Great start!

“Hey Gully!” Speak of the dev...no, that was mean. Spire couldn’t help the fact that the PRT found his boring ham sandwich body more palatable than my big dented can of spoiled dog food. “Sorry about yesterday. I tried to get them to consider you, and Tecton was willing to-”

“That’s okay.” He flinched, and I tried not to think about how it was probably from my voice. Big, guttural, deep...I was like some kind of ogre from a fantasy book. I read a lot of books, so I have a pretty good understanding of monsters...and I’ve been one as long as I can remember. “They made the right choice. I’m sure you’ll do fine. Do you need a hand with anything?”

“Well I was about to go practice with my powers a bit, so if you want to join me…” He trailed off, as if I was going to refuse. True, I wasn’t always the most conversational member of our team, but since I was banned from patrol and couldn’t use the Console without smashing it…I nodded.

There were a lot of powers on my team that used stone, between Spire, Prefab, and I. So we’d gotten a whole heaping slab of rocks shipped in, turning one of the training rooms into a quarry that would make that Earth Aleph show about the time traveling doctor jealous. 

It also gave us a certain amount of privacy, since everyone else needed weights and other crap that wasn’t here. It was loud, so nobody tried to talk to me, and I could just practice in peace.

Despite that, we only made it an hour into practice before Spire made the mistake of talking to me. I can’t really blame him, since he’d seen how pissed I was yesterday. If he was going to be the leader now, he’d have to talk to me regularly...but it still annoyed me.

“So, I couldn’t help but hear you...tossing and turning last night.” He was leaning against the wall, a series of stone spikes of all different sizes popped out of a slab of limestone nearby. I tapped my shovel on the ground and tried to make a perfect cube rise from the ground. Maybe if I kept going, he’d have time to cut this line of conversation- “Sounded like a nightmare.”

My shovel fell from my hands, clattering loudly on the ground.

One strategy would have been to just laugh it off, throw my braids over my shoulder and pretend I’d just eaten something strange for dinner. Or I could pick up my shovel, say I was going to take a walk, and give him time to realize that was a really dumb question. Maybe I could just...what the hell...was he picking up my shovel?

“Here you go.” He handed it over, his little five-foot-nothing frame dwarfed by my huge body. He needed both hands to pick it up, struggled as he’d lifted it, and must have seen the expression on my horrible face. But he still did it, and added, “You don’t have to tell me about it, but if you-”

“Bye.” I swept out the door, cursing myself as I accidentally bumped into him with my shoulder. I wanted to turn back and apologize, but could feel him hit the ground and roll back to his feet. I expected him to take a swing at me, shout after me, but instead he just...stood there.

He just stared after me, like everyone else did. A hero, watching a monster retreat.

I went out the door, down the hall, and back to my room to cool off.

But as I stepped inside I realized it wasn’t my room anymore…

***

My room had always been fairly simple, a hazard of being inhabited by a creature with a huge body and clumsy fingers. Stuff was always breaking, and all that added up after a while. After a few months of trial and error, I got the PRT to understand that I only needed three things:

A big bed that I could sleep in, easily replaced when I smashed it after a nightmare. I had one pretty much every night, so it was right next to the door.

A closet without a door, full of heavy-duty clothes and costumes. I wasn’t going to win any awards for congeniality, so no need to worry about colors and styles. Just cover me. Done.

Finally, my bookshelf. Even though I was a huge brute, I still had a pretty damn good mind and vocabulary. I didn’t get to use either that much, but then again it wasn’t like anyone expected me to think or talk when they saw me. Still, I had a lot of books, from gifts to recommendations, and took better care of them than anything else in my possession.

Or at least, I used to.

I guess the furniture guys were playing a joke on me, because even though my bookshelf had been replaced with an unbroken one, all the books were missing. I grumbled under my breath, hunting around the room, and started to panic after a moment when I failed to find them. 

I even looked in the closet, but there was nothing there, either.

Then I came out of the closet, and saw a monster.

It was a familiar monster.

See, usually I only have three things in my room. Bed, closet, bookshelf. Easy.

But when I first moved in here, there had also been a dresser. Normal people use them for socks, underwear, writing tools, and makeup. They also tend to come with a mirror, so people can admire themselves.

I don’t admire myself. 

So when I came out of the closet and saw they’d not only stolen my books but also left me a dresser with a big mirror, it made me angry. I stalked towards my reflection, glaring at the monster as she did the same. Then I stopped, and growled at her.

She growled back.

“You’re a monster,” the creature said to me. It was a hulking beast, skin twisted as though made of scar tissue, coloration all over the place, muscles looking like a small child had squished a bunch of clay together. Its face was hidden behind ratty braids of hair, tumor-like growths peeking out from behind the curtain, and its upper jaw ground against an underbite. “I hate you.”

I couldn’t stop looking at the monster. It made sure I’d never have friends. I’d never have a leadership role. People would never look up to me. People would never respect me. Nobody would ever love me. Everyone hated me. I hated me!

I didn’t realize that I’d started yelling that at some point, nor that I’d started smashing the monster in its ugly face. Over and over, until a hundred little monsters stared up at me from the ground and from shards of monster embedded in my fists.

I collapsed to the ground, weeping and raging, trying to smash the monsters even smaller.

But when I started to wipe at my face, I heard a voice.

“Hey, let me help with that.” I slowly turned my head, and saw that someone was standing beside me. With me kneeling like this, we were just about even in height. He held a box of tissues in one hand, and a big bunch of them in the other. “I’m sorry about before.”

I had nothing to say, and just knelt there as Spire gently cleaned the tears from my eyes.

I barely flinched as he took my hands, and carefully picked the glass out of them.

Then he led me to my bed, sat down beside me, and…apologized.

***

I talked to him for what felt like an hour, but was probably only fifteen minutes. Even though I was mostly talking about today, there was so much to say, and words just kept pouring out of me.

The whole time, he got more and more angry, and it took me a while to realize it wasn’t  _ at  _ me. Hearing how those workmen just barged in, stared at me, had given me a mirror, and taken my most treasured possessions... 

He was mad  _ for _ me.

Soon, he got up and put a hand on my shoulder, looking into my horrible face without flinching.

“I’ll fix this, Gully. Just give me some time.”

Then he was gone.

I felt exhausted by the whole thing, and lay down to take a nap while I waited. I figured that if it was just a quick nap, there wouldn’t be time for any nightmares.

I was wrong, but at least I woke up to find my room wasn’t any more destroyed than when I’d dozed off. Plus, Spire was by my bookcase, carefully shelving my books, and he smiled as he saw me rise.

“Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you, even if you looked like you were having a night-” He cut himself off, then went back to shelving. The books were all different shapes and sizes. Some for kids, others for adults, many fantasy, and so on. “You’ve got quite a collection here.”

“When I first got found by the PRT, they told me that books would let me travel to far away lands, and escape my n-nightmares. So maybe I could have good dreams, or at least happy thoughts during the day.” I rolled my eyes as he gave me an odd look, then I smiled and shrugged. “Well, that was the theory anyway. I like to read, so I never stopped.”

“I watch romcoms to do the same thing, actually.” He smiled, a faraway look on his face. “After my parents divorced, I used to have horrible nightmares about how much they hated me. But watching quirky people have fun adventures and happy endings...it helped me feel better.”

“Yeah, but in my case all my favorite books have monsters in them, so…”

I trailed off, realizing that his TMI had made me reveal something that nobody except my PRT therapist and Tecton really knew. I considered just walking away now, or changing the subject, but...he’d helped me. He was going to be my leader. So maybe...maybe I could trust him?

“I smashed my mirror because it reminds me of my nightmares.” I sighed, brushing my foot through the shards of mirror on the floor. I saw Spire look worried for a moment, and stared down at the hundreds of tiny monsters on the floor instead. “My nightmares...I dream about being this beautiful girl. Sometimes a brunette, sometimes a redhead, freckles, long legs, perfect skin...and then I look in a mirror, and I’m...this. A monster.”

“You’re not a monster. No, hear me out.” Spire held up a hand as I turned a glare on him. To his credit, he didn’t stop talking, even if he did flinch back a little. “Jack Slash? Looks perfectly normal and has killed countless people. Hookwolf, over in Brockton Bay? Big muscled sexy dude, but he’s a murderous nazi bastard. Lustrum? Beautiful babe who brainwashed a thousand women into mutilating and killing guys.  _ Those people _ are monsters.”

“You know that’s not what I meant. I’m supposed to be a hero, but I’m a hideous-”

“No? So let’s look at some of your books.” He pulled a few out, holding them up. “Frodo Baggins is a shortie with hairy feet, still one of the bravest heroes in Middle Earth. Rincewind is a skinny coward, but he still saves Discworld. Cyrano de Bergerac has a huge nose, but is the greatest of romantics. The list goes on and on...heroes don’t have to be beautiful.”

I didn’t reply. It wasn’t that I was having some great revelation and throwing off the shackles of my incorrect notions. It also wasn’t that I hadn’t already heard all these arguments before. No, it was how for the first time since I’d met him, I was actually thinking of Spire as being a leader. 

Before, he’d always seemed kind of like a coward who talked a big game, but now?

Now he was telling me I wasn’t a monster, telling me I was a hero in his eyes…

I started crying again, but this time it was for a different reason.

Because I’d actually started to believe him.

***

Later, the two of us were eating in the cafeteria, and two workmen approached.

They apologized for being rude this morning, and said they’d cleaned up my room. One of them sounded like he was just reading off a script, but the other actually sounded kind of sorry. Maybe that was just because Spire was here, but I chose to believe that it was actually legit. They both headed off and we returned to our meal, but then Spire snapped his fingers and made a noise.

“Hey, I just realized that I never got the chance to ask, but with all your books...which one’s your favorite?” He smiled innocently at me, and I was surprised to find myself grinning a little as well. “I never knew you were such a fellow book nerd, Gully. Maybe we could have a book club?”

“Maybe. Um...it’s kind of silly, but my favorite book is...” I couldn’t really blush, but I leaned forward a little and hid more of my face behind my braids. I was all ready for him to laugh, the idea of a big brute reading a book for tiny babies. I barely whispered, “It’s a children’s book.”

“Hey, there’s no bookshaming here.” One of his hands gently patted mine, and I looked up to see a completely serious look on his face. “Personally, my favorite is Where the Red Fern Grows, but I want to hear more about yours first. If you don’t wanna say, you don’t have-”

“No, it’s okay.” I took a breath, then tried to keep my voice level as I told him. “My favorite book is  _ Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day _ .”

“Really?” His eyebrows went up, and I was so afraid he was going to laugh, but then he nodded. “Yeah, I can see why. Is it from schadenfreude, or something deeper than that?”

“At first it was because seeing a little brat suffer makes me feel better about my own life, but at a certain point I started to realize something else.” I smiled slightly, and was glad when he looked right at the disaster that was my face and didn’t recoil. “Alexander had the most horrible day, where everything went wrong, and it made me remember that people besides me have problems, too. Plus, even after all that...he still kept going all through the day. He didn’t give up.”

“Ah, I see. I’m guessing you’re also a fan of Charlie Brown?” He grinned at my nod, and played with some food in his tray. “Yeah, me too, and for the same reason. Life just kept piling crap on him, but he never gave up. He was a born loser, but he still fought to be something.”

We talked for quite a while, covering several subjects and books, and eventually parted ways.

That night, as I lay in my new bed and read one of the books Spire had loaned me, I smiled.

I might not have been the leader yet, but the one we were getting was pretty good.

As for me, I wasn’t going to stop trying, even if it took me another ten tries.

I’d just keep digging, deep inside myself, trying to find a hero inside.

That night, I didn’t have a nightmare about what I was.

Instead, I dreamed of going on an adventure.

I dreamed of being a hero.


End file.
